An Interactive Workshop for Interracial Adoptive LGBTQ+ Parents

Hosted by COLAGEr, Tony Hynes, Training Specialist, Center for Adoption Support and Education. This seminar will provide a space where perspective and current interracial adoptive LGBTQ+ parents can share their questions, experiences and concerns about parenting children who are of a different race from their own. In addition, during this event, parents will learn about best practices in interracial adoptive families related but not limited to: best practices in creating diverse environments, how parents can help their children in fostering healthy racial identity development, how to talk about race and racism in interracial adoptive families, and the importance of birth family connections. Join us!

Tony was adopted by his parents, Mary and Janet, in the mid-1990s. He writes about his experiences growing up as both an interracial adoptee and as a child growing up in an LGBTQ-headed household in his memoir “The Son With Two Moms,” a text that has been cited in the family court system to highlight best practices. Today, Tony is an advocate for families like his, having served on the Board of Directors for organizations that help to highlight adoptive families from diverse upbringings. He has been invited to be a speaker at conferences on adoption and foster care throughout the nation and has a passion for speaking up for children and families touched by challenges in the adoption and foster care system. Tony completed his master’s thesis in Sociology on the psychology of children within the same-sex headed household and is now completing his Ph.D. studies in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County, where he has begun work on his dissertation, which focuses on social connectedness among adult, interracial adoptees. As the Training Specialist at the Center for Adoption Support and Education, Tony Hynes has designed innovative training curriculums that help families and professionals respond to evaluation and assessment tools that encapsulate holistic pictures of adoptees and foster youth.